A simple INI file parser and writer for Python that works.

Installation

pip install simplini

Why?

The reasons this library was created:

• Standard library configparser does not support round trip editing (comments will not be written back), see https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html
• Alternatives like https://github.com/DiffSK/configobj have a lot of bugs and are not actively maintained

Comparison

Library	Round-trip editing	Maintenance	Correctness	Configurability	Multi-line values	Error reporting
configparser	❌	🟢	✅	✅	✅	🙂
ConfigObj	✅	🔴	🐛	❌	❌	🤔
python-ini	❌	❓	❓	✅	❓	🙁
ini-parser	✅	❓	🐛	❌	❌	🙁
simplini	✅	🟢	✅	✅	✅	🥰

Features

• Simple API
• Round-trip editing preserving comments
• Non-ambiguous strings encoding
• Configurable parsing and rendering behavior
• No surprises like sudden interpolation or lower-casing option names

Usage

Basic usage example:

from simplini import IniConfig

# create a new INI config
config = IniConfig()

# add values to the default section
config.set("app_name", "My App")
config.set("version", "1.0.0")

# you can use section object to interact with section settings
db_section = config.ensure_section("database")
db_section.comment = ['Contains database settings']

db_provider_opt = db_section.set("provider", "mysql")
db_provider_opt.comment = [
    "Controls the DB provider to be used"
]

# ... or set values directly via root config object
config.set("version", "1.2.3", section_name="database")

# save to file
config.save("config.ini")

# load back from file
loaded_config = IniConfig.load("config.ini")

app_name = loaded_config.get("app_name")  # My App
version = loaded_config.get("version")  # 1.0.0

db_section = loaded_config.get_section("database")

db_provider = db_section.get("provider")  # mysql
db_version = db_section.get("version")  # 1.2.3

Example config file output:

app_name = "My App"

version = "1.0.0"

# Contains database settings
[database]

# Controls the DB provider to be used
provider = "mysql"

version = "1.2.3"

License

MIT License